


passerotto

by varsiity



Series: backstories [1]
Category: Town of Salem (Video Game)
Genre: Absent Parents, Character Death, Childhood Memories, Depression, Execution, Gen, Gun Violence, Insomnia, Italian Mafia, Murder, Prostitution, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Unrequited Love, some italian phrases that will be translated in the end note
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-08
Updated: 2017-11-08
Packaged: 2019-01-30 22:11:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12662445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/varsiity/pseuds/varsiity
Summary: The Mafioso can't help but wonder what could possibly come next.





	passerotto

Luciano Cavelli.

 

Born in a rural town somewhere on the southern coast, growing up in a blur of sunlight and cicada screams. He doesn’t remember most of it, but what he does is painful, like a lovely dream that ends too soon and begins to fade as soon as you wake up. Catching fireflies in glass jars. Sneaking into the Mayor’s orange orchards with his twin sister and stealing fruit to bring home as presents for their mother. Climbing the rocky beaches and imagining themselves as other people leading other lives.

 

His sister is the sharpest part of it, just as careless and daring as he was, too impatient to sit and let their mother braid her hair. Always outside. Always doing something. Her name, Calandra, too delicate for her liking so shortened to Cala. She spent her days dreaming of bigger and better - places, people, things. Luci thinks she must resent him now, for leaving her behind, chasing his own future without a second thought.

 

Luci’s mother was warm, comforting. A red ribbon in her greying hair and candy always in the pocket of her checkered apron. Headstrong, a first generation Italian immigrant, and oh so proud. _Just like her children, they’ll grow up to be something special,_ is what the old women in town would say, as Luci and Cala sat cross-legged on the floor and watched them sew. _Destinato alla grandezza. Now run along, gattini, your mother will be waiting._

 

His father is a gaping hole, one that he never much thought about as a child. Checks came in the mail sometimes. His mother’s face would darken when she opened the envelopes. Never as much as the man was supposed to send. Never as frequently as they should have arrived. Life went on.

 

His nineteenth birthday came and went, and there was a letter in the mailbox. He still remembers the way his mother went pale as she read the envelope. Stumbling over the words as she read them aloud, in an accent that only grew thicker with her fear. The script was beautiful, in rich black ink, on paper that cost more than her monthly salary. _Summoning Rosa Cavelli’s eldest to replace the deserter._

 

 _Deserter_ is the name he gave to his father after that. A disgrace to the family name, a _vergogna_ who brought shame upon the legacy left to fend for itself. A coward in the worst way. Someone he would never forgive.

 

He found his grandfather’s revolver in a chest in the attic and left the next day. That’s the last time he saw them, his mother crying on the doorstep and his sister, hair gleaming in the sun, ushering back inside. Into the little white house with the silver curtains and meticulously clean floors. The weavers cheering, the whole town out to watch him. _There he goes, Luciano Cavelli, the one who will make something of himself. Bring back a reputation, passerotto. Make them know your name. Make sure they never forget it._

 

He has gained a reputation since, but he will never bring it back, not to those orange trees and that sickly, salty air, where Italian words waft on the breeze and fireflies light up the sunset.

 

The Mafia resided a few dozen miles away, and while they were not the ones who sent the invitation, they were the ones who were to prepare him for it. A small-town organization at best, in a place so boring that nobody had bothered to give it a name. The members were promising. The Godfather was legendary. Adamo DeLuca, cold and viciously strict; a man who enforced discipline above all else, who taught Luci how to get away with murder and live an intricate lie. Probably dead now, or in hiding up in the northern mountains. Never anything more than a boss, but the closest thing to a father that the Mafioso had ever had. The other members were nothing like Luci.

 

A Consort - Romano di Sano, who was from the city and showed it, in the clothes he wore and the makeup around his eyes. Gorgeous and charming, the talk of the town (there wasn’t much else to talk about, with a population of maybe three hundred). A man who, for all his skills in bed, couldn’t keep a single meaningful relationship together. Maybe flighty, maybe anxious, maybe detached. Or maybe just flat-out scared.

 

The other, a Consigliere. Chiara Petrocelli, half-Irish and smart as a whip. Sharp, bossy, with ginger hair and a dedication to the rules that rivalled even Adamo’s. A cheerful acquaintance of Luci’s. Maybe a friend, if the Mafioso was feeling particularly generous. Luci had only seen her other side a few times, mainly on the rare nights when Romano decided to seduce the bartender into handing over a few bottles of whiskey.

 

They brought it up to the hill on the coast, sat on the rocky expanse and took shots while the waves crashed a hundred feet below. Friends, the three of them (for once without Adamo hanging over their shoulders). Nights that wound away in a haze of cheap alcohol and laughter. Shared headaches the next morning. _Friends._

 

Those times don’t last long, and it’s only a few months later when the trio gets reassigned, leaving Adamo and the no-name town behind. Luci says goodbye to the Godfather, goodbye to the salty air, and wonders what next.

 

Their first real round.

 

Started in rooms smelling of Chiara’s heady floral perfume and cigarette smoke. They were joined by others - Asha Femi, the dark-skinned Forger, with more skill in her trade than anyone else Luci has ever met. Maria Accetta, the Disguiser, hopeful despite the scars down her arms. Casey Dell, the blond Amnesiac who Chiara never truly grew to trust, who fell in with the Mafia for a few rounds and then vanished with a Survivor he particularly liked. When it truly began.

 

Blood, sweat, tears, shared among all of them. Luci’s first murders, intricately planned but leaving the Mafioso no more prepared for the moment when his target’s blood first splashed across the wallpaper. A revolver in his hand. A body on the ground. Easy enough. And the townies would do the same to him if they caught him.

 

They win the first round. Victory is like a breath of fresh air. They celebrate, with dubiously obtained tequila and rounds of poker, until well past midnight when there’s nothing left to bet. The atmosphere is warm and friendly, almost like home, and Maria catches a firefly in her hands. _For a bright future._ She lets it go near the lynching stand, and the Mafioso tucks his gun away until next round. The Mafia moves on the next day. It leaves nothing behind but an empty town and a few more fresh graves out behind the town church.

 

And so it repeats, this time with even more newcomers. Adrien, buff and intimidating, the stoic, silent Ambusher who never gives her last name. And Adrien’s best friend, the cheerful and always-optimistic Framer. Carmine Trudu. The one Romano falls for, and when he falls, he falls _hard_.

 

Smoking in the graveyard, holding an honorable Mafia funeral for the Disguiser he barely knows. Maria Accetta, who caught a firefly. That’s when Luci gets his first taste of spite, of the anger that the more experienced Mafia members carry with them. When the town tosses Maria into a shallow, unmarked grave and leaves her to rot. Less than human. Unworthy of even a proper burial. Paying for crimes she didn’t commit.

 

They do what they can - rebury her, leave a small wooden marker at the head of her grave. Luci snuffs out his cigarette. Adrien wraps an arm around Asha’s shoulders when the Forger begins to cry. Chiara murmurs a prayer under her breath as they leave.

 

_Welcome her into paradise, where there will be no sorrow._

 

 _La Cosa Nostra,_ the _famiglia_ . His only family, now, with his mother and sister a hundred miles away and his father probably well on his way to hell by now. Luci doesn’t think about _that_ family any more now than he did back then. The only family he kills for is the one that brought him in, made him into something. _Destinato alla grandezza_. With the Mafia behind him, he can almost believe it.

 

It’s similar, after a while, once the Mafioso gets painfully used to seeing the bodies and hearing the gunshots. Chiara leaves eventually, off to bigger and better things, to pursue a career as a legitimate Investigator. Carmine and Romano stick around, along with Asha. Adrien stays until her end. Luci doesn’t even flinch when he sees her slashed-open corpse leaning against the lynching stand one cold November morning. Carmine leaves the nightly meeting halfway through, breaking into heaving sobs, and Romano looks completely, utterly drained.

 

Corona Riso joins them, a blonde Janitor, who has the funniest stories and the loudest personality, so full of life that it almost makes up for the emptiness of the others. She brings Galen Leove, the mute Blackmailer, and a mystery never solved by anyone except maybe Asha. So many names, so many roles, so many faces. They blur together. Romano drinks until he’s numb. Luci brings him water when he can’t get out of bed the next day. _Everything is fine_ , he tells himself, as if repeating it enough times will make it true.

 

They go through Ashford, Worcester, North Hampton. The games drag on. Rounds that eventually turn into routine. The guessing game of who will be the next to die. It’s been weeks, months, years. Two or three or four. He doesn’t know how old he is. He doesn’t think it matters.

 

Luci gets a single letter from his sister, once, and feels nothing as he reads the cramped script (the Mafioso still wonders how she tracked him down).  Not two or three years; it’s been five and a half since she’s last seen him. Luci sends half of his monthly paycheck to the address she gives, a city in Georgia, where she takes care of their mother and works for a Sheriff. She misses him, is what Cala says in the letter. They all do. He folds up the letter and burns it.

 

Sleep is difficult, after a few too many nights of waking up screaming. Pictures cloud his mind. The gleam of a shotgun barrel in candlelight, pointed directly between his eyes. Too many brushes with death to count. The noose tightening around Galen’s neck, and the noise it made as his body fell. One night, where the Coven Leader used him like a puppet, and only Asha screaming for the Doctor saved Carmine from a bullet in his torso. The Framer forgave him, brushed it off, and Romano didn’t leave his side until Carmine was up and walking again.

 

When he can sleep, he dreams of citrus and hazy skies, and he wakes up with a headache. The Escort lures him into her bed, once or twice. He wakes up the next morning, vanishes before the sun rises. Her perfume smells of oranges. The scent of home. He shoots her eventually. It's only when he's standing over her corpse that he realizes the perfume is green apple instead.

 

Luci needs to keep them together, needs to keep them alive, but he isn't Adamo, isn't even Chiara, is nothing but a useless man with a revolver and a dedication to his cause. He dreams of smoke and blood, of the Consort’s eyeliner and alcohol, his mother's lilting accent mixed with Chiara’s prayers. _Careful where you walk, tesoro. Your father's footsteps are everywhere._ Red ribbon and grey hair. _In this world, she has died._ _Give her eternal rest, O Lord._ The Escort’s bright gold curls, a halo around her face as she collapses to the floor with a bloody waterfall from her neck. _I named you Luciano, for the light you bring to my life._ He wonders how much light he brought into the Escort’s.

 

March and April come and go, and the Investigator is catching on, her green eyes sharp and alert. Romano sleeps with her to dull them a little bit. Luci wonders about the Consort, sometimes, on the nights when Romano is too exhausted to keep up his normal defenses and he curls up on the couch in silence. He talks with Carmine, usually, voice low and uncharacteristically affectionate. Luci has picked up enough Italian from his mother to recognize the endearments that Romano occasionally slips in. It feels almost too intimate, to hear Carmine laugh quietly, to watch the way Romano’s eyes soften even as the Framer brushes it off. _Cuore mio._ The Consort’s feelings are not returned, and Romano already knows. Luci wonders why he does this to himself.

 

The Framer leaves, eventually, headed off to do his job and then go to bed. The others follow. The room is empty, at the end, save for the Consort and Mafioso. Romano isn’t going out. Luci has already finished the night’s assignment. The Mafioso averts his eyes as politely as possible when the Consort starts crying, the first and last time he ever sees Romano’s facade completely collapse.

 

Self-torture, Luci concludes later, when the Consort has collected himself and silently left the building. He does it just for the pain. Chasing someone who will never love him back.

 

Carmine dies, eventually, months later, and Romano parts ways with the rest of them after the round is over. Luci leaves Corona and Asha behind. This time, he heads south.

 

When instructions come in from up above, when his next assignment arrives on beautiful parchment in elegant ink, he tears it to shreds.

 

His head hurts, full of people and voices. Luci wonders if it’ll ever go away. Whiskey drives it away for a little bit, clears things up and lets him get through another few hours. Somewhere behind his eyes, Chiara prays for Maria’s soul. Somewhere in his mind, Romano dabs at the mascara running down his normally-flawless face. The Mafioso wakes up in a cold sweat and finds his hotel room is filled with the scent of the Escort’s perfume, so sickly sweet that Luci wonders if he might suffocate. Twenty-five years old but he feels as if he's lived forever. Too young to die. Much too young to die.

 

Luciano Cavelli, without a middle name (too poor for his mother to afford one, maybe). Luciano for light. He wonders if heaven will welcome him, if the pearly gates will simply slam shut when it comes time for him to face them. He wonders if Chiara will pray for him the same way she prayed for Maria. He wonders how much longer he can go on like this, the world foggy and collapsing all around.

 

The women from his hometown smile, faces gentle, and ask if the little sparrow has fallen out of his nest.

**Author's Note:**

> vergogna - disgrace, (a) shameful person  
> gattini - kittens (affectionate term used for children)  
> destinato alla grandezza - destined for greatness  
> tesoro - treasure  
> passerotto - little sparrow (a fledgling, someone new to something)  
> cuore mio - my heart
> 
> interpret the ending how you will. please keep in mind that this is not beta read, so if you find any glaring errors feel free to point them out so i can fix them. thank you for your time!


End file.
